John Grayson reveals the spread of corporate involvement in the provision of asylum housing in the UK and northern Europe, and how outsourcing and private companies are tarnishing Europe’s ‘welcome’ to refugees.

In observations made at a side-meeting of the 87th session of the Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD),[1] the IRR's director warned that Europe's mishandling of the refugee crisis is fuelling racism.

The IRR publishes a disturbing new report, Unwanted, unnoticed: an audit of 160 asylum and immigration-related deaths in Europe, revealing the extent of Europe’s departure from its vaunted humanitarian ideals.

Nearly 70 per cent of those who voted in a referendum in Switzerland on September 24 said yes to reform of immigration and asylum laws. But the committee formed to oppose laws, which, according to UNHCR are amongst the harshest in Europe, has announced that it will build on the support of the 32 per cent of the electorate which opposed the laws to create a more progressive approach to asylum.*